This post was last updated on January 14th, 2016 at 01:05 am
Some habits are very hard to break—cutting line and tippets with your teeth is one of those habits. By the time i was 25 I would bet I had cut the line 5,000 times using my teeth. It wasn’t until I hit about 30 before it started to get very painful and I broke the habit. I recall the very night that I trashed my front teeth on a night fishing adventure.
My Tooth Cracking Fishing Story
It was about midnight in late June and I had a very large trout feeding in front of me. I could not see my hand in front of my face, so I was simply casting upstream of the fish and trying hard to recall the exact layout of the trees hanging over the river by the bank. He was eating hex flies about every ten seconds and I could tell by the loud pop every time he fed that it was a massive brown trout. I was utterly dying to get my fly drifting back over his head.
I had just broke off my whole rig in the tree just upstream of the trout and decided to tie about 7 feet of 14 pound maxima and call that a good enough leader. Reaching into my pocket I could not find my nippers or my swiss army knife. I placed the line in my mouth and began to grind my teeth left and right, moving my jaw around like an addict high on cocaine. With the maxima just starting to cut, I felt the lowest portion of my top front tooth shatter—leaving tooth shards floating around in my mouth. The cool air entering my mouth on the next breath brought excruciating pain.
That was the last time I cut line with my teeth, since then; I can’t even bare to watch someone do it. Nippers are cheap, and these days I always carry at least 2 extra sets with me on every trip to the river.
What Do Dentists Think About Cutting Fishing Line With the Teeth?
I have talked to dentists before about this and I am guessing we all already know what they said. Dentists can actually identify a person who fishes a lot by the chipped up teeth. Often times people will cut line so much, they’ll actually cut a groove in their teeth—this is another tell tale sign that you are a line cutting junkie.
Cutting Line Ruins your Enamel
Tooth enamel is the outer layer of your teeth that protect them from damage. It is actually the hardest substance in the human body, but it is not unbreakable and it can wear out. Unlike most parts of our bodies with living cells, tooth enamel does not grow back and it cannot be replaced. Every time you cut fishing line with your teeth you are wearing your enamel more thin.
Bottom Line
Stop cutting fishing line with your teeth. You will need your teeth for the rest of your life. Just go ahead and buy a pair of nippers and save your teeth for what they were made for—eating. I actually took a macro image of my front teeth to show you the damage that you can do, but I decided not to post it. Take my word for it, you should stop cutting fishing line with your teeth ASAP.
